Interactive Teaching and Learning Skills Initiative, (iAct), to continue and scale up during 2018!

A total of 600,000 learners attend education in 3500 Community Schools, where they are taught mostly by volunteer teachers without any formal training. Roger Federer Foundation and Reformed Open Community Schools (ROCs) developed a self-guided course for community school teachers in service training, approved by the Ministry of General Education.

The Interactive Teaching Skills Project (iAct) goal is to contribute to quality education by improving interactive teaching skills of community school teachers. Helped by DAPP and ROCs, 1 500 Community School teachers in 500 Community Schools have during year 2017 been studying using tablets that are fitted with video lessons. Teachers have been working collaboratively in ensuring that the training succeeded. Teachers then applied modern teaching methods in their class sessions. The project is funded by the Foundation of the tennis world champion Roger Federer.

During 2017, DAPP trained 650 teachers in the iAct methods of teaching in 235 community schools. The program complements the implementation of the 2013 revised curriculum by the Ministry of General Education, that advocates for a learner controlled interactive approach to teaching and learning.

The course has proved to be practical and interesting as most of the community school teachers in training are now using lessons learned in ensuring that the learners are getting the best out of the teacher.

Teachers in this training learn to use own resourced local materials to teach interactively. Teachers are now able to attend to a multi-grade session due to the idea of grouping the learners in grades and having the teacher being in the centre of the group, offering guidance while learners interact freely in understanding the lesson given.

The good news is that iAct by DAPP is in early 2018 scaling up to train 1000 teachers in 344 schools in 12 districts in Southern and Central province. Estimated 86,000 learners enrolled in the targeted community schools will benefit from high quality teaching.

DAPP wishes to congratulate those teachers who decide to enrol for this exceptional change in life and encourage them to study hard. This will enable their learners to become critical thinkers, who will apply their skills and knowledge to solve problems in their community